Several months removed from a short teaser trailer and a concise statement from Rockstar saying Red Dead Redemption 2 is “an epic tale of life in America’s unforgiving heartland,” we still have no concrete details about the game other than the fragments we salvaged from the early footage. As we wait for Rockstar to share more about its highly anticipated sequel, we can’t help but wonder what lessons the company learned from the hugely successful Grand Theft Auto Online that could be applied to the “brand new online multiplayer experience” coming in the developer’s return to the Wild West.

The Golf Club franchise has redefined video game golf. The first title not only created an enthusiastic community of course architects with its creation tools, it also supported that community by building on the core game with updates instead of a perfunctory yearly release. In short, it took on video game sports heavyweight EA Sports and won the round with a better product.

Now that developer HB Studios is preparing to release The Golf Club 2 this spring (PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One) we'll see if the studio can take the next step with the series, build on the first title's solid gameplay foundation without a swing HUD, grow the career mode (which was added in a post-release update for the first Golf Club), and continue to spur the talents of its course creators.

HB Studios debuted the game at E3 last year, but has been rather quiet since then. Today, however, we have a new dev diary-style trailer for the game showing and discussing its core tenets, as well as a Q&A dive into some of the details courtesy of producer Shaun West.

When I decided to turn the 12.31 Super Replay into an annual event, I knew the focus needed to be on bad games. People enjoyed watching us suffer; that was the hook that stood out. We used Overblood as the foundation for the type of game we were looking for each year. Blue Stinger, Illbleed, And Martian Gothic were all games that delivered a similar stench. They were perfect selections for the annual Super Replay.

When Tim Turi left Game Informer to work at Capcom, I realized this Super Replay event wouldn't be the same without him. He played through all of these bad games, and, well, I don't think it would have been fair to continue on without him. Out of respect to Tim, we are moving away from the survival-horror angle, and are falling back on my original pitch: it needs to be a bad game period.

As it turns out, there are many different flavors of terrible video games, and I think we found another example in Sonic the Hedgehog that is every bit as enjoyable, campy, and unbearably bad as the original Overblood. The game is simply titled Sonic the Hedgehog, but it's often referred to as Sonic '06. It's developed by Sonic Team for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and is another failed attempt to give the blue speedster new life.

This article was originally published on 02/01/17. RPG Grind Time is a bi-weekly column that returns every second Wednesday.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been close to 15 years since the first Kingdom Hearts game released. This actually makes me feel a bit old. Since that game launched, I’ve graduated from high school and college. The amount of time elapsed feels almost surreal. I don’t think I ever could have predicted the bumpy ride I’d be on with the series. My younger self surely never thought I'd be waiting until 2017 for Kingdom Hearts III, but here we are.

I didn’t quite know what to expect when I sat down in my living room to play Resident Evil 7. I had just spent the last two weeks doing multiple playthroughs of Resident Evil 4 so I could write a piece about that game’s legacy and the influence it had on the industry as a whole. Even 12 years later, I was still awestruck by 4’s innovations and how well it had aged, so I came to 7 with much trepidation, mostly due to Capcom’s strange and ill-conceived marketing campaign for the game, which lingered too long in boring mysteries and withheld information about what 7 was actually going to be until close to launch. When I learned that the game was going “back to the series roots,” I was both cautiously optimistic and skeptical.

With the exception of 4, Resident Evil has always been a series that I liked more as an idea than a game I enjoyed playing. I can understand why players loved navigating the mansions and cityscapes that comprised the first three titles, but the tank controls, occasionally tedious puzzles, and bad bad combat made them games that I played through more out of a duty to understand what place they had in gaming history rather than something that was fun to play.

Your first thought is likely "That's a beautiful, green eyeball." Your next thought is probably "Is she wearing a chain around her face to hide a hideously disfigured nose?" If we're reading your mind as well as we think we are, your third thought is "Wait. Is this a horror game? Goodness gracious, that is scary!" We've played Condemned: Criminal Origins to completion, and can confidently say all of your thoughts are spot on.

Condemned is a first-person survival horror game for Xbox 360 that mixes crime scene investigations with disturbing hunts for serial killers. Shadows dance, footsteps echo over head, and you may even see a dead bird or two as you try to piece crimes together. In this week's Replay we play through the first two levels of this Xbox 360 launch title by Monolith. The team's previous work on delivering scares in the F.E.A.R. series pays off handsomely in Condemned. The game gets under your skin and scares you when you least expect it.

In our second segment we travel back to the Sega Genesis for a look at a game few people have seen. There's good reason why this relic has been lost to history.

Valentine’s Day is coming up, and that likely means a crowded restaurant and overpriced flowers may be on the horizon for many of us. But if you and your partner prefer a quiet and romantic evening at home, you could do a lot worse than laughing and smiling across the tabletop for at least part of your evening.

The games below are great picks for couples looking to mix their love for one another with an enthusiasm for great game design, humor, and good conversation. I’ve tried to make a point to include games that fit different styles of play. Maybe you’re both dedicated gamers looking for a new shared game. Or perhaps you’re a non-gamer, and you want to give a gift to your gaming partner that shows you’re interested in their hobby. No matter the situation, I hope you can find something fun to share with each other below.

I’m posting this story ahead of the holiday, in case you’d like to purchase and work one or more of these games into your plans. But even if these don’t fit into your Valentine’s Day plans, all these suggestions are all excellent options to enjoy with that special someone on any day of the year.

We've talked a lot about Resident Evil 7: Biohazard since its launch, but always with the caveat that we wouldn't reveal spoilers. That's not the case for this video.

The word is in the headline, but that doesn't mean we can't offer another warning: this video is full of Resident Evil 7 spoilers. Andrew Reiner, Javy Gwaltney, and I are joined by former GI editor and now Capcom employee Tim Turi, who has been the world's biggest Resident Evil fan since he was 11 years old. We discuss the ending, its importance to the wider Resident Evil universe, and that one very cool puzzle room.

We've talked a lot about Resident Evil 7: Biohazard since its launch, but always with the caveat that we wouldn't reveal spoilers. That's not the case for this video.

The word is in the headline, but that doesn't mean we can't offer another warning: this video is full of Resident Evil 7 spoilers. Andrew Reiner, Javy Gwaltney, and I are joined by former GI editor and now Capcom employee Tim Turi, who has been the world's biggest Resident Evil fan since he was 11 years old. We discuss the ending, its importance to the wider Resident Evil universe, and that one very cool puzzle room.

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Jun 7, 2017Updates and bug fixes OTW.

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